Hunted again with Rocky and Lorell Heckman of Montana Safaris. Modified the hunt this season. Spent most of the time camped in a spike camp on the continental divide, guided by Rocky and Lorell’s son Coulter.

The change put us in the middle of our hunting territory at the start of each day. We used our horses to get around for the most part, but hunted out of camp on day two.

Here’s the gist of the story.

Day one, Rich misses a cow elk at 200 yards. With a herd of 30 elk, no bulls, passing through a burn at 200 yards, I got prone and shot at one of the herd. Looks like I never touched any of them leading my guide, Coulter, to theorize that I must have hit a tree. In any event, it was a clean miss.

On day two we hunted out of camp and saw no legal game animals, but we did find two grizzly bears about 160 yards from the trail and 200 yards from camp. Got a couple pretty good pics.

These look-alike grizzlies were searching for berries on an open ridge about 200 yards from our camp site. Fortunately they never came for a visit.

Day three produced one of the most exciting days of deer hunting ever. After I missed three times, we followed a buck estimated by Coulter to be about 27 inches wide. We caught up with him twice during the day. The first time we caught up with him I buried a bullet in a tree on my fourth shot and plain missed him running on my fifth.

When we caught up him and his doe companion, the 320 yard shot was nearly impossible in fifty mile an hour winds, so we tried to get closer, but failed. By then it was getting dark. We rode to camp in twilight.

On day four we found the herd of cow elk again, but couldn’t find a way to get close enough for a shot.

The crew brought us feed for our horses on day four and then they hunted near our camp where they came upon two wolves, but were unable to get a shot.

Day five and six produced some opportunities at deer, but nothing that we were looking for. That’s hunting.

This is the area where we found the big buck. It was a burn created in the fires of 1988.

In all, the group had sightings of wolf, grizzly, black bear, elk, moose and mule deer. We observed many tracks of these species and also the track of a wolverine. This wilderness area is about as wild as it gets in the lower 48.

As a large winter storm approached at the end of the hunt, large flocks of migrating geese and swans could be heard above us. Winter came in as we departed.

When I climbed into my cab to head to the airport on my last morning in Montana, the temperature was nine below zero, Fahrenheit.